All I have now is a wide-brimmed straw, for hot sun.
School hats were the worst! There was a tradition at my school of all the upper sixth burning theirs on the last ever day of school.
As a young woman, a grandmother of mine adored hats and spent much of any spare cash on those big, Edwardian type ones. She was tall and they suited her, but she told me that her mother would say, ‘Another hat! I hope you’ve got my money!’ (GM worked in a draper’s shop.)
I always find it amusing to read in novels set decades ago, how someone would go out with only her ‘gardening hat’ crammed on to her head - dear oh dear!
Back in the 60s an elderly great aunt would not set foot out of doors without a hat, but it’d be one of those muddy-mauve coloured woolly ones.
In a Victorian novel (Trollope) I loved how a male character said to a woman he was taking out for dinner, ‘A lot of ladies dine there. You can dine in your bonnet.’
